“I’m frazzled. I left something in the hotel. It’s just a couple minutes’ walk. Can you watch my stuff?”
“Sure.” I noticed that her wallet was lying on the ground by her backpack. She noticed that too when she returned and looked at me suspiciously for a moment until it came together in her mind that she was indeed frazzled.
We were the first two people waiting for the Greyhound (Indian Trails) at the uppermost part of Michigan. It was early morning and still dark. She had just been released from forty-five days of rehab for Fentanyl, crystal meth, and methadone.
I’ve heard for years, like some kind of background noise, that the U.S. has an opioid crisis, but I’ve not followed it closely and frankly didn’t even know exactly what fentanyl is. I asked her what kind of drug it was.
She said, “It’s like heroin or morphine but much better. It’s the ultimate. You feel like you’re being hugged by something loving, something warm and cozy, like nothing bad can happen to you when you’re wrapped in its embrace.”
She entered rehab because she had been arrested for possession of Fentanyl. A dealer had sold her some and then had given her a powerful mix of drugs which rendered her unconscious. When she awoke, she was frightened and confused and ran half-dressed from her apartment onto the street. The police returned her to her home, searched it, found the drugs, and arrested her.
She’d had a hard time finding a rehab facility that would take her, because methadone stays in the system a long time and can be physically difficult to detox from without medical supervision. Her father was driving her from rehab to rehab and when the third place turned her down, he pulled over and threw up, so great was his stress.
She said that her father was the president of a major Michigan university and her mother taught criminal law. I later did a search and found his bio and photo. She looked like his daughter.
Now she was headed out to live in a halfway house against her parents’ wishes. They’d hoped she would stay in rehab another two weeks. She wants to help addicts. She wants to be near her fiancé, an assembly line worker in a plastics factory who is “not an addict, but is on methadone to recover from other drugs.” After listening to her story, observing her behavior and her negative reaction to the word “God” (“I prefer Higher Power,”) I felt that her long-term chances of staying sober were slim.
The Upper Peninsula of Michigan is beautiful. Bays and harbors, farms and fruit orchards. Rolling hills, pines and hydrangeas. Chocolate fudge and sweet cherries. If I had been traveling by car that is all I would have noticed. I would have stopped at farmers markets, eaten cherry pie, bought a few overpriced souvenirs. But, for various reasons, I was on a Greyhound bus for home
The second bus had a mix of folk, but it was the under-thirty white people that caught my attention. The young men had the wiry, high-strung look of addiction. A pretty young woman in her early twenties looked healthy but she was talking to a fellow about how many times she had tried rehab and relapsed. (I don’t eavesdrop, but I do observe people and I listen carefully to what they say because you learn interesting things that way, and it is also important to have a sense of your surroundings. That’s just common sense.)
Sitting across the aisle from me was a woman who’d been kicked out of the home of married friends. She denied that she had come between them. She was on her way to her cousin’s home near Flint, where she hoped to obtain work at Walmart or Marshall’s. This was her first bus trip and her luggage was a large kitchen garbage bag. She did not talk to me about her addictions, but I did hear her discuss them with “Charlie Manson.”
The star of the second leg of the journey was a man I came to think of as “Charlie Manson.” I saw him board the bus with no ticket, just a gigantic duffel bag and a curbside transaction with the bus driver. He was probably in his middle to late thirties with a curly mop of reddish-blonde hair and a scraggly beard. The addicts all seemed to gravitate towards him. He was an elder statesman preaching the evils of crystal meth and Fentanyl. “You have to get off that [stuff].”
Charlie was an Iraqi War veteran, “messed up” by what “they” gave him, what “they” did to him. He didn’t say what, he just held court, and the young addicts were enthralled.
“I’ve been in Colorado working with an amazing African plant called Iboga. It’s absolutely life-altering and it’s being used to treat addiction. Call it Grandfather. Ayahuasca is Grandmother and Grandmother is wonderful, but Grandfather will change your life forever.”[1]
According to Charlie Manson, a/k/a Johnny Appleseed, some drugs are very, very bad but some drugs are nearly supernatural in their transformative powers. It takes a drug to get you off drugs. Timothy Leary pushed the wonders of LSD and encounter groups in the 1960s. Nearly sixty years later, the script remains the same.[2]
Charlie needed an audience. The right kind of audience. At a rest stop I asked him the name of this drug. He spelled it for me and then walked away to his young, fawning acolytes, who oohed and aahed over his superior, arcane knowledge. One of his disciples hooked up with the woman who was sitting across from me. She had said to Charlie that she needed help getting off drugs, but she lacked the attentiveness to sit at his feet and listen to the tale of Iboga. She went off on a little trek with another of Manson’s disciples and came back looking happier.
****
Most of the U.S. fentanyl supply is coming in from Mexico using chemicals sourced from China.[3] Just one more sad example of our trade deficits.
****
At the little bus stop in Benton Harbor, Michigan, waiting for the bus to Chicago, I was approached by an obese young woman who looked distressed and was panhandling for money to get home. She said she was seventeen and had run away from home because her abusive twin sister had slapped her. She had taken a bus to Detroit to visit another sister who had also physically abused her. Cops had been called and they returned her to the bus station but gave her no bus fare.
I gave her $8, and then she asked a young black woman for money who also gave her a few dollars. She kept telling our bus driver that the bus she was waiting for would be there in a few minutes. He argued that she had already missed her bus and that there were no more buses that night, but it turns out that that she was right and hadn’t missed the last bus of the night.
I inquired if she had asked her parents for the fare money. She had but they had said no. She was over sixteen and should be able to keep a job and take care of herself. I asked if she worked; she said she tried but couldn’t keep a job because of a type of seizure she called “sood” that was aggravated by the stress of working. I said, “Like a grand mal seizure; epilepsy?” She said, “Like that, but called sood.”
After speaking with her for a few minutes, I asked myself what on earth I was doing. The woman was obviously not a con artist, but an unfortunate soul minutes away from spending a night at a bus stop, running from one abusive situation to another and back again. That Bible verse popped into my head “Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.”[4] We went together inside the station, and paid the $46 fare for her return home. She offered the clerk the little bit of cash that she had begged for and I gave the clerk $40 and suggested to the girl that she use the change and buy something to eat on the way home.
On my laptop, I tried to find a seizure disorder called “sood” or “sud,” and found a condition called Pseudo-seizure, a very real seizure which is a physical manifestation of psychological stress, whose causes include anxiety, ongoing family conflict, emotional or sexual abuse, et cetera. This must have been the girl’s malady. Every time I think of her in the stress of her plight, I feel a tinge of shame that I didn’t immediately purchase her bus ticket.
****
At journey’s end, with the Greyhound grime washed away, I looked through my mother’s library for some bedtime reading and found a pamphlet in book form, The Bitter Cry of Outcast London, by Rev. Andrew Mearns, a Congregational minister, exposing the overcrowded living conditions of London’s poor. Congregationalists have been involved in some of the bigger social struggles, from the temperance movement to women’s suffrage.
Rev. Mearns insisted that living conditions had to be improved “before the Christian missionary can have much chance...” This is the first lie. Conscience is inherent to humans. We are hard-wired to know right from wrong. We do not need full bellies or a roof over our heads to know when we are in error.
This publication appeared when many churchmen were moving away from a strict emphasis upon salvation and the afterlife towards social justice and “environmentalism.” That word in the context of ministry reminded me of the Liberation Theology of the Catholic Church, where priests, clergy, and laymen joined the class struggle; Liberation Theology has been rightly criticized for its acceptance of Marxist concepts. Islam, too, does not focus on individual salvation, but advocates for the imposition of Sharia Law, which they believe creates an “environment” conducive to salvation.
Some accused Rev. Mearns of sensationalism when he wrote that it was urgent to address overcrowding because “incest is common.” He responded to his detractors by saying that by “common” he did not mean “very frequent.” “You do meet with it”, “and frequently meet with it, but not very frequently.” So if it’s not very frequent, then is it rare? One can see how this was designed to shock and titillate the Victorian reader; the accusations of sensationalism appear valid.
The publication of this pamphlet led directly to The Housing Act of 1885, which empowered the Metropolitan Board of Works to build working-class housing, and act as landlord. Later, in 1919, a bill was passed allowing local city councils around England to build low-cost housing; hence the term “council flat” entered the English language and remains to this day. The charge was towards socialism and away from laissez-faire individualism. J.G. Adderley, reviewing The Bitter Cry in The Christian Socialist, concluded: “As to remedy, the first thing necessary is to throw over laissez-faire.”
Beatrice Webb described the period in which this pamphlet was written as one which witnessed “a new consciousness of sin among men of intellect and men of poverty.” She did not mean personal sin. “The consciousness of sin was a collective or class consciousness; a growing uneasiness, a conviction...that the industrial organisation...had failed to provide a decent livelihood and tolerable conditions for a majority of the inhabitants of Great Britain.” Webb was a founder of the Fabian Society, which pushed socialism through gradualism and reform rather than by revolution. Vladimir Lenin said that the ultimate goal of socialism was communism and famously quipped, “Communism is Socialism in a hurry.”
It is interesting to learn how far back this movement away from personal salvation (and personal responsibility) goes. It isn’t news that for years, socialists and communists have quoted Jesus in support of their “theology.” In my own reading of the Bible I cannot make a case for a Socialist Utopia from the words of Jesus. In John 18:36, when Jesus says, “My kingdom is not of this world,” he was speaking to the Romans about their authority to deliver him to the Jews. But he speaks of a heavenly kingdom. The authority of heaven works upon individual hearts and in this way earthly institutions and human relationships can be transformed.
Two other examples of how we are to interact with the poor are John 12:8 and Luke 3:11. The verse from John, “For ye have the poor always with you; but me ye have not always” refers back to Deuteronomy 15:11, “The poor shall never cease out of the land; therefore I command thee, saying, Thou shalt open thine hand wide unto thy brother, to thy poor, and to thy needy in thy land.” He acknowledges that in this worldly system, poverty is a fact, but we are all called upon to do what we can to help those we encounter who are in need. John the Baptist in Luke 3:11 says, “He that hath two coats, let him impart to him that hath none; and he that hath meat, let him do likewise.”
In Matthew 8:20, in answer to a scribe who wanted to follow him, Jesus replied “The foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have nests; but the Son of man hath not where to lay his head.” All of Matthew chapter 8 suggests that by following the example of Jesus, one will be witness to and participant in the miraculous, but it might not be an “easy, comfortable” life.
When we allow the State to determine how suffering is to be alleviated, or what constitutes charity, we are already under some form of socialism. Services and public servants become our masters. Active testimony to the saving grace of God and Jesus does require a bit of “environmentalism,” i.e., ministering to people’s practical needs for food, clothes, and shelter, but it’s one soul at a time. One on one.
****
At the Chicago terminal I saw a heavy, young black girl with a T-shirt which had “Happy July 4” crossed through followed by the words “Juneteenth, 1865. Because my ancestors were slaves in 1776.” Maybe I read something into her look my direction, but I got the distinct impression that she didn’t like me because I was white.
****
The Curious Incident of the Bus Driver Who Fell Asleep...Four Times
The bus from Chicago to Memphis departed about 10 PM and was due in Memphis in the early morning. I thought it would be a good chance to get some sleep. We boarded the bus, I ate my bag of Cheetos and drank some water and then nodded off. I was awakened by the entire bus erupting in screams. I thought I was having a nightmare and had ended up in Las Vegas to witness someone win the jackpot. “Stop the bus! Pull over!” everyone was screaming. The bus driver didn’t respond but continued driving while passengers demanded that he stop. About 10 minutes later, he nearly sideswiped a semi.
The entire bus was in an uproar. People were calling the police from their cell phones, screaming at the driver, asking one another what we could do. Over the next half hour, he fell asleep twice more and never responded or acknowledged what had happened. There was no “Sorry folks. I just had a sip of Red Bull. I’ll be fine.” Just total silence. Now I felt like an extra in a Stephen King movie.
The driver eventually pulled into the scheduled stop in Effingham, IL. Everyone poured off the bus, carrying their bags, demanding some kind of resolution. The police arrived and several people relayed the story to them. The police said there was nothing they could do. It was a Greyhound matter.
About ninety percent of the passengers were black. As we commiserated over the unwillingness of the police to step in and the trauma we had just endured, I was approached by a heavy-set white woman with elaborate, multi-colored braids. I had noticed her earlier and felt she identified as black; one of those people who have become completely convinced that they are something that they’re not.
“You’ve got to go talk to the police. Maybe they’ll listen to you.”
“Why will they listen to me?” I asked.
“Because you’re white,” she answered.
I really didn’t feel like testing my white privilege, but I did ask the police why an out-of-control driver who had refused a breathalyzer test, had endangered the lives of sixty-five passengers and at least one tractor-trailer driver was not a police matter, but rather the purview of an unreachable private company.
We stood around some more. The driver eventually said that he was leaving and anyone who wanted to ride with him had to get on the bus and the rest of us must remove our bags from below the bus. About a third of us removed all our baggage and two-thirds re-boarded. At this point, the police decided that perhaps they should get involved. Greyhound was finally contacted, and the police informed us that a new driver was being dispatched from St. Louis and was expected in about an hour and a half. Weirdly, the police did nothing when the driver said that no one was allowed off the bus until that substitute driver arrived. Those of us who had fully disembarked entered the trucker’s lounge where we waited...for eight hours.
Here, my fellow “waiters” were several black women, mostly over fifty (or sixty) and one white lesbian, aged thirty-two. There was a grandmother, a nurse, on her way back from her sister-in-law’s funeral. As the hours wore on, I learned that she had grown up around ten aunts. She had eight sisters, two daughters and several grandchildren. They were all close. She was actively involved in her grandchildren’s homework. She hated Trump and showed me her Facebook page with loads of anti-Trump cartoons and videos.
The lesbian had a girlfriend and wrote children’s fantasy books. She was a Baptist preacher’s daughter, recovered from Xanax, methamphetamine, and cocaine. But she’s all better now, thanks to her daily use of marijuana. In Michigan and Illinois, recreational marijuana is legal. It’s Huxley’s Brave New World and Soma is everywhere.
There was Sonya, an accomplished chef with fear of flying, who had recently lost her sister and nephew in a drive-by shooting. She was funny and sarcastic, a single mother who doted on her very successful grown daughter and two granddaughters. She was a follower of Jesus, she didn’t like judgmental people and she had a pretty significant Xanax dependency.
Eight hours is a long layover and even factoring in regularly checking on the whereabouts of our substitute driver and demanding that our driver allow a diabetic woman to retrieve her insulin from his prison-bus, we still had a lot of time for conversing.
Maybe there are courses taught on how to effectively witness the Word with such brevity and clarity that one can bring people to a near-instant conversion experience, but I never took that course so I wing it and try to plant little seeds of Truth and kindness where I may.
A little group of us discussed Black Lives Matter. There was no point in trying to educate them on the Marxist agenda, and the trained Marxists, behind that organization (and Antifa.) I asked one woman if she didn’t think it was possible for black accomplishment to be promoted and celebrated without declaring Year Zero, toppling statues and rewriting history. She said that black people had a long way to go towards true liberation, but she didn’t agree with toppling statues.
Speaking of toppling. Alan Watt, a lecturer, author, and songwriter, always illustrated culture as an edifice held up by pillars. If you knock down one pillar, the others will fall one by one, and the structure will not stand. This is what I saw on my Greyhound journey. I saw a society limping along. Broken families, an epidemic of drug addiction, the lunacy of identity politics and Wokism. Even at a (social) distance of six feet, behind hospital masks and cheerful comparison of Vaccine Manufacturers, I could see nothing but fallout.
Lesbianism is clearly a choice in defiance of nature which means it is in defiance of our Creator. As a Baptist preacher’s daughter, this lesbian could run circles around me with Bible passages. Oddly enough, the verse that finally drove her from the church was Hebrews 11:3, “Through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear.” She had been teaching a Bible study group and the elders didn’t like her use of plural “worlds.” (She was right; it is plural and, yes, God created worlds other than this one.) “They were a racist, homophobic lot anyway,” she remarked.
Her coming out story is the same one you will hear in any television drama. “I didn’t fit in. I hated myself. I used drugs.” But observing how frequently she texted or spoke with her girlfriend or her girlfriend’s children, or her children, or her children’s father, I could see the never-ending drama of the chaos her choices imposed on others. Just like the first addict I met in Michigan, I sensed I wouldn’t get far with straightforward talk about Christianity. I tried, but she said, “I don’t use the word God, I say ‘Higher Power’ and I use Divination Crystals.”
I told her the story of an acquaintance of mine who had lived a homosexual life for more than forty years before deciding to practice celibacy. She was mystified and curious about it. “Why? After championing for gay rights, why would he make that choice?” I couldn’t answer that fully, but I did say that he had come to realize the destructive effects of that lifestyle. He had also studied the agenda of the cultural warfare that has been waged on the U.S. (and the world) and had come to see that the promotion of homosexuality was a huge part of that war. She did agree that the media seemed to always be pushing LGBT this and LGBTQ that, and that, “they are really going too far with the whole trans thing.”
I asked her if she knew the statistic that domestic violence was higher within homosexual relationships than heterosexual ones, and even higher within lesbian couples. She had heard that. I said that there is always a price to pay for choices.
At the very last stop in Texas, I bought a bottle of water. The clerk was a trans woman.
(A man. An it.) It was extremely polite to me. Texans are a friendly and hospitable people, even the trans ones.
Who knows if anything I did or said had a positive or thought-provoking effect on anyone or if anyone I encountered will be prompted to consider Christianity as an antidote to this world’s ills. The U.S. of A. is clearly no longer “the land of the free” but perhaps it is still home to a few brave souls who will shoulder their responsibilities and open their hands wide to the poor (and the poor in spirit) and the needy.
[1] Ibogaine: The Psychedelic Drug That Could Fight Addiction
https://www.discovermagazine.com/health/ibogaine-the-psychedelic-drug-that-could-fight-addiction
[2] Psychedelic microdosing investigated for pharmacological effect on the brain
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-07-29/microdosing-study-macquarie-university-psychedelics/100324706
[3]America Must Address Its Other Epidemic: Fentanyl Overdoses
[4]Matthew 25:40